


At the Fringe Festival

by mysid



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 14:38:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9128068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysid/pseuds/mysid
Summary: When the Lupins visit the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Remus has an opportunity to explore his newly realized attraction to boys.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thistlerose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thistlerose/gifts).
  * Inspired by [She Will Have Music](https://archiveofourown.org/works/758364) by [Thistlerose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thistlerose/pseuds/Thistlerose). 



> To celebrate Thistlerose's birthday, I thought it would be appropriate to write something inspired by one of her stories. I found my inspiration in _She Will Have Music_. One paragraph about Remus and a boy named Paul led to this...
> 
> Remus is JKR’s; Paul is Thistlerose’s; no one is mine. Alas.

**At the Fringe Festival**

“Let me know if you see something you like,” Remus’s father said yet again to his wife. “You do have a birthday coming up.” She made a non-committal noise that may have been assent as she moved from examining one glass case of handmade jewellery to another. 

Remus hung back just outside the tent and looked down the row of booths and tents of “Handmade Arts and Crafts”. The line of booths stretching ahead of them seemed as long as the line behind them. Handpainted silk scarves, more jewellery, puppets and marionettes, drums and bowrins, pottery—it all seemed to be more of what they’d already seen. 

Remus glanced at his watch. The next performance his parents wanted to see—a French folksinger—was over an hour away. His mother could continue to browse at a snail’s pace and still be there in plenty of time. Down the street, a vendor was selling ice cream from a cart. Remus wasn’t hungry, but he considered going to get a cone just for something to do. 

That’s when he saw him. It was the second time he’d seen him actually. Earlier that day, just as they were passing some very _bad_ mimes—“Should I put a real transparent box around him, Remus?” his father had whispered—Remus had seen the blond teenager passing in the opposite direction. There was something about the way he’d held Remus’s gaze the entire time they were passing that had made Remus look back over his shoulder just to see if the blond were still watching him. When the blond had looked back over his own shoulder and smiled, Remus had quickly turned back, embarrassed to be caught staring. _Then_ he had smiled. He hadn’t been the only one staring, had he?

The blond was looking in his wallet, apparently counting his money. He put the wallet away before looking up and looking around the street. Remus stared unabashedly until the blond saw him and smiled. Remus couldn’t help but look down then, blushing fiercely at being caught staring again—but he grinned and looked up again.

For hours after they’d passed one another, Remus had wondered about this boy. Ever since his parents had begun discussing coming to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival, Remus had been daydreaming about moments like this. He’d come to the realization that girls held no appeal for him, but boys—boys definitely did. But it was an appeal Remus had never been able act upon. To play this sort of cat and mouse game of looks and smiles—to flirt with another boy—would be impossible in the small town where he lived, and just as impossible within the small community that was Hogwarts. To do so would risk exposure. But here, in city where he was a stranger, he finally had his chance. And so Remus had wondered: Had the boy been looking at Remus for the same reason Remus had been looking at him—or had Remus simply had dirt on his nose or something? 

The blond was already making his way down the street toward him, and suddenly, Remus had a decision to make. Did he want to continue this game? Did he want to do more than just daydream about touching another boy—and _being_ touched by another boy? Or did he want to retreat to the safety of his parents?

“Remus?” His father touched him on the shoulder to get his attention as they moved on from the jewellery tent to the next booth. The blond hesitated, watching, and allowed the crowd to flow around him. The next move was Remus’s.

“Can I meet up with you later?” Remus asked his father.

“I’d really prefer you didn’t go off alone,” his father said.

At the edge of Remus’s vision, the blond waited in the midst of the shifting crowd. “I think I spotted one of my friends,” Remus lied, a lie he instantly regretted. He needed to keep his friends’ names out of this if he didn’t want his parents trying to compare impressions of the festival the next time they met.

“Who is it?” his mother asked, now looking at the crowd.

“No one you know,” Remus said quickly. “He’s in Hufflepuff.”

His parents looked at one another, conferring silently, and his father nodded at her. “All right,” his mother said to Remus with a smile.

Plans to meet later were quickly made, but not quickly enough for Remus. He didn’t dare look back toward the other boy while his parents were watching him so closely, and every moment that went by was another moment that the boy may have given up on him and gone away. When he was finally released, just for a moment he thought his fear had come true; the blond teenager was no longer where Remus had seen him standing. But there, near a booth of art pottery, the boy was pretending to browse while watching Remus. Remus developed a sudden interest in art pottery himself.

“Got away from your parents, I see,” the boy said. Remus felt a thrilling jolt at hearing his voice the first time. The voice of the boy he planned to—hoped to—actually, he didn’t know quite what he hoped to do.

“I just have to meet them for supper,” Remus replied, hoping desperately that his voice wouldn’t crack and reveal it’s as yet unsettled state. The blond’s voice seemed already well settled into the deeper register of adulthood, and he stood half a head taller than Remus. Remus hoped he didn’t seem too impossibly young.

“Me too. Mine are off watching a puppet show with my little brother and sister.”

“I don’t have any. Brothers or sisters, I mean, not puppets.” Remus blushed fiercely and stared down at his shoes as the full inanity of his words struck him.

The other boy laughed, but he sounded amused, not scornful, so Remus dared to look up again. Seeing the boy’s smile, Remus smiled back. The boy glanced over Remus’s shoulder, and Remus knew that even at his parents’ browsing pace, they had to be getting closer.

“C’mon,” the boy said as he led the way down the street and away from the approaching parents. “I’m Paul.”

“John,” Remus replied. He often gave his middle name when he didn’t feel like explaining his unusual first name.

“John and Paul. Now we just have to find a George and a Ringo and we’ll be all set.” 

Although he’d half expected it, Remus laughed at Paul’s joke.

“What kind of music do you like?” Paul asked as he pulled a much-folded festival schedule from front pocket. “We could go listen to someone.”

“Whoever you’d like,” Remus started to say, and then recognizing the opportunity for what it was, he leaned in closer to Paul so they could look at the schedule together. Although their only contact was arm against arm, with layers of shirts and light jackets between, Remus was highly aware of how solid Paul felt pressed against his arm. That muscular solidity—nothing like the soft yielding feel of a girl—that’s what he craved. That’s what he’d daydreamed of. Remus wished he had an excuse to touch Paul’s arm with his hand. Remus breathed in Paul’s scent. He had the warm and earthy tang of a teenage boy; clean but with a hint of fresh sweat. He thought of the cloyingly sweet floral fragrances that teenage girls doused themselves with and wondered how anyone could prefer that to this more honest scent.

“Listen,” Paul said as his head went up. Somewhere nearby, a solitary performer was playing a guitar and singing “Blackbird,” a Beatles song. They grinned at each other and set off in search of the singer.

 

They wandered for a couple of hours, often standing on the periphery of crowds watching one performer or another—and using the pretext of the crowd to brush against one another or lean into one another. They’d wandered into one gallery displaying photographs and then into another of ‘found objects’ sculpture. Their whispered commentary on the sculpture and the inevitable accompanying muffled laughter had drawn the sneering disapproval of the adults in the gallery, but they hadn’t cared. Paul had actually put his arm around Remus’s shoulders in a comradely sort of way as they left that gallery.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty?” Paul asked as they passed a little hole in the wall shop selling a little bit of everything the neighbours might need. 

“Yeah, I guess I am.” 

They made their way through the shop, past the magazines and the hair care products to the row of snack foods in their colourful cardboard boxes and plastic wrappers. Paul selected a box of candy, and Remus selected a packet of crisps. In the back of the store they found the shelves of sodas—and of beer. Paul stared at the beer for just a moment too long before looking back at Remus with a smile, and Remus knew what he was going to do. 

“Here, you go pay,” Paul said as he thrust his candy and fistful of coins into Remus’s hands, “and try to keep his attention.”

Remus grabbed a bottle of soda and went to do as he’d been bid. He didn’t bother mentioning that creating a diversion was one of his specialties. This time it was accomplished by knocking a display box of disposable lighters off the counter. By the time Remus and the shopkeeper had gathered the colourful plastic lighters off the floor, Paul was waiting outside with a lump shaped like a bottle of beer under his jacket. One part of Remus was disappointed that he’d gone through that for just one bottle—Paul should have nicked two at least—but another part, the part that disapproved of nicking anything, was glad that the crime had been kept minimal.

“Where should we go?” Remus asked.

“How about up to Arthur’s Seat?” Paul suggested, and Remus agreed. He’d eyed the extinct volcano with interest earlier in the day, and now the rocky outcropping and its surrounding grasses offered a place to escape from the crowds which had surrounded them all day. 

An entrance to Holyrood Park wasn’t far away, and soon the two teenagers had left the pavement behind and were walking up a gravel path leading up to Arthur’s Seat. Unfortunately, many other tourists seemed to be ready for a break from the festival, and Remus feared they wouldn’t find the privacy they’d been seeking. The path wound clockwise and gently upward toward the peak, but Paul suddenly left the path as if to circle the peak counter-clockwise. 

“This way,” Paul called over his shoulder, but Remus was already following. After just a few minutes more of climbing, they’d reached the perfect place, a grassy slope to sit upon protected by a stone outcropping which curved behind them to hide them from view of everyone on the path. “A good spot?” Paul asked as he sat down on the grass and looked up at Remus with a smile.

“Perfect,” Remus agreed as he sat down beside him. 

The purloined bottle was brought out from its hiding place. The unanticipated difficulty, no bottle opener. While watching Paul try to open the bottle by scraping the cap against the rock, Remus considered getting rid of the cap with a banishing charm. He felt fairly certain that the Ministry wouldn’t concern itself about such a small and unobtrusive spell; they only tended to get huffy about the ones Muggles were likely to notice. The tricky part would be keeping Paul from noticing how he did it. He thought he could turn to block Paul’s view of the bottle first, but by the time he’d resolved to try it, the cap suddenly released.

“You first,” Paul said as he offered the bottle to Remus.

Remus had never tried beer before. He’d had butterbeer in Hogsmeade, and he’d had small amounts of wine with dinner on many occasions—his mother’s French heritage showing—but no one had ever offered him beer. The taste was bitter and unpleasant, but Remus didn’t dare allow his dislike to show on his face. Paul was undoubtedly a year or two older than he was, and the last thing Remus wanted was to seem too young. 

After taking a sip of his own and passing the bottle back to Remus, Paul took a new pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. Remus wondered if he’d purchased those somewhere earlier or nicked them as well, but he didn’t ask. Paul lit a cigarette with practiced nonchalance. When he offered it to Remus, Remus tried to pretend that he too had been smoking for years, but the choking cough induced by the smoke betrayed him. 

Paul took the cigarette back, grinning. “You don’t have to smoke if you don’t want to,” he assured Remus. 

Remus took another sip of the beer. It was still just as unpleasant, but it helped wash away the taste of the smoke. They passed the bottle back and forth a few more times until it was gone—Remus merely tipped the bottle up and pretended to drink when it was his turn—while making inconsequential small talk about the view. 

Remus felt the lightest ghost of a touch on his hair. He suspected that if he did not acknowledge it, or if he reacted badly, Paul would merely pretend that he’d been pulling something out of his hair. Instead, Remus inclined his head, leaning into the touch, and then looked over at Paul with a smile. Paul smiled back and stroked Remus’s hair again. Remus shifted slightly closer, and Paul let his hand drift down Remus’s back. This— _this_ was the moment he’d been waiting for. The thrill of anticipation had coloured the entire day. 

Paul’s hand paused in the centre of Remus’s back, not daring to go lower, before drifting back up again. Remus abandoned the pretence of looking at the view in favour of turning to look at Paul. Paul was watching him with an almost hungry look on his face. Remus reached out, tempted to run his hand down Paul’s leg and feel the muscle under the tight trousers. He didn’t quite dare; his hand stopped on the grass beside Paul’s leg, and just the tips of his fingers touched cloth. 

Apparently, it was encouragement enough. Paul reached across Remus, stroking then gripping his arm, and leaned in close to kiss him. The initial touch of lips was almost innocent, just enough for Paul to make sure that Remus really did want this. Then his mouth became more insistent: lips hard against Remus’s and tongue forcing its way in. For a moment, it all felt just too bizarre. Remus didn’t know how to respond. Should he simply allow Paul’s tongue into his mouth or was he supposed to do the same back? It didn’t help matters that Paul tasted of smoke and beer. But something about the wet heat of Paul’s mouth did feel _very_ good.

Paul pushed Remus back onto the grass, and Remus allowed himself to be pushed. He liked that Paul was strong enough to do so, and loved the heavy feel of Paul pressing against him. One of Paul’s hands worked its way under his shirt, and Remus squirmed with pleasure at the touch of the cool fingertips. Remus’s hands seemed to be acting of their own volition. All day he’d wanted to touch Paul: his tautly muscled arms, his flat stomach, his perfectly shaped arse, and now he could touch and stroke and grasp as much as he wanted. He gasped in amazement at how good it felt when Paul’s mouth was on his throat.

“OK, yeah?” Paul asked.

“Yeah,” Remus sighed. Paul had wedged one of his legs between Remus’s and had been rubbing his groin against Remus’s thigh—which meant that he’d also been rubbing his thigh against Remus’s groin. It’s was _very_ OK. Remus would gladly do this for _hours_.

One of Remus’s hands was under Paul’s shirt, and he shifted from clutching Paul’s back to stroking his stomach. Paul’s abdominal muscles felt taut from the slight effort he was making to keep some of his weight off Remus.

“Lower,” Paul urged, and to emphasize his point, he began to rub Remus’s cock with his own hand. Insulated by layers of cloth, the pressure of a hand wasn’t all that different from the pressure of a thigh, but the _deliberateness_ of it was amazing. Any pretext that their rubbing against one another was accidental was stripped away. Paul _wanted_ to touch him there; Paul _wanted_ Remus to touch him there. And Remus did. Even through the cloth of Paul’s trousers and pants, Remus could feel the heat and hardness of Paul’s cock. 

_”I can’t believe I’m really doing this,”_ Remus thought briefly, but thinking was becoming more difficult with every moment.

Paul suddenly shifted to the side, pulling Remus with him so they were lying side by side. Remus wondered why; then he realized that Paul was unfastening his trousers. He watched, slightly stunned, as Paul shoved his pants down and out of the way. His cock was hard and fully erect—as if Remus had had any doubt after feeling him through his trousers—but suddenly this was all a bit too real. This wasn’t just a bit of innocent snogging. Paul grasped Remus's wrist and tried to pull his hand back to stroke him again, but Remus resisted.

“C’mon, John. Please. It feels so good,” Paul begged.

Remus wanted to. He wanted Paul to keep touching and kissing him, and it seemed only fair that he do what Paul wanted in return. But this was _so_ real—touching _there_ , deliberately, and without clothes in the way. And _how_ was he supposed to touch him? Did Paul just want him to keep rubbing as he’d been doing, or should he curve his hand around his cock to hold it, or—

He must have hesitated too long, for Paul rolled onto his back and began to pull his clothes back into place. “I’m sorry,” Paul said. “I went too fast, didn’t I?”

“No, it’s all right. I just—I didn’t—” 

“My fault. I went too fast for you,” Paul said again. He gave Remus a light kiss on the cheek before returning his attention to refastening his belt. 

Remus suddenly felt impossibly young. _“Too fast for a little kid like you,”_ were the words he heard. The innocent peck on the check just seemed to emphasize it.

Paul sat up and moved back to lean again the rock behind them. “C’mere,” he said patting the grass beside him, and when Remus sat there, he put his arm around Remus’s shoulders just as he’d done earlier in the day. Remus could just reach the bottle of soda he’d purchased when Paul had nicked the beer. He offered it to Paul as a silent peace offering, and they began to share it as they had the bottle of beer.

“I need to meet my family soon,” Paul said.

“Me too,” Remus said, although he still had a couple of hours until then.

“Do you live near here?” Paul asked.

“No.”

“Me neither.” But neither offered where they _did_ live.

* * * * *

“Did you have a good time, Sweetheart?” his mother asked when Remus finally rejoined them. 

“Very good,” Remus said with a smile.

 

_—Written January 2006_


End file.
